MamaEarth: Shilpa Shetty Kundra invests $250K in baby care products startup

Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty Kundra has invested $250,000 in MamaEarth--an online baby care products startup. The Delhi-based startup will deploy the fresh proceeds to enhance awareness of the brand, expand product categories as also scale up its offline footprint and distribution.

Backed by Fireside Ventures, MamaEarth was founded in 2016 by a husband and wife duo Varun and Ghazal Alagh. The startup is present in stores across Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru and plans to expand to 10 cities with the fresh fund infusion.

MamaEarth claims to present across 300 stores and currently clocks a monthly gross merchandise volume of Rs 1 crore. With over 200,000 products sold in FY18, MamaEarth is targetting a 3 times growth in the coming year.

The startup’s product portfolio includes certified toxin-free body lotions, rash creams, hair shampoo, body wash, diaper rash cream, massage oil, all-natural bug sprays and sunscreen lotion, which cater to infants as well as children of up to five years.

The company sells its products through Amazon India, Flipkart, Nykaa, and FirstCry.

Earlier, MamaEarth had raised $1 million from existing investors Fireside, along with other VC’s. Prior to that, it raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by Fireside, besides a clutch of high-net-worth individuals in December 2016.

Shilpa Shetty Kundra made her first appearance in an online portal in 2011 by stepping into the real estate sector with grouphomebuyers.com--a real estate e-commerce platform to help home buyers. Shilpa along with Shweta Shalini had also launched 'The Billennium Divas' angel fund for women entrepreneurs & startups in 2017.

Fireside, founded by former Helion Venture Partners’ senior managing director Kanwaljit Singh, had recently closed its first fund with a corpus of Rs 340 crore. Since June last year, the VC firm has invested in startups such as Yoga Bar, Goodness Beverages, Vahdam Teas, Bombay Shaving Company and most recently Pipa Bella.

Besides, Fireside also counts Samosa Singh, Design Café in its portfolio companies.

The development was reported by ET.